


When I feel like an open wound

by britishngay



Category: The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: F/F, On the Island - Freeform, Shelbys mind, idk how to characterise this, right so uh, the gals are mentioned but not explicitly there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-17 16:21:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29474622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/britishngay/pseuds/britishngay
Summary: She indulges.She grabs Toni by the back of her neck and pulls her in and kisses her before she can stop herself.(or Shelby's thoughts throughout from 1x04 to onwards)
Relationships: Shelby Goodkind/Toni Shalifoe
Comments: 8
Kudos: 104





	1. Chapter 1

_“Eve indulged in that apple, easily seduced by that snake Shelbs.” Her dad says, kissing her on the top of her head, arms placed around her. She’s always felt safe in his arms._

_She had asked about Eve. Why she had eaten the apple, why she was swayed by a snake, maybe she was just hungry, maybe she_ craved.

_“And that’s why we do not wanna be like her? You hear? Indulgence has caused all this, darlin’ and that’s why we don’t do it.”_

_“Yes daddy.”_

_\--_

Toni indulges.

That’s what Shelby notices. She let’s anger and emotion fuel her, until there’s nothing left to burn and she’s destructed herself so much that there’s just a husk. They argue on a beach where no one can see them, she notices how Toni’s jaw clenches with anger and ignores the tugging in her gut at the sight, instead letting it anger her.

She’s fucking furious; at herself, at her parents, but mainly at Toni.

Because she lets herself _be_ herself, because she’s quicker to anger than her Daddy after a bad sermon, because she makes Shelby’s stomach twirl in a cocktail of emotions that are getting harder and harder to ignore.

She looks triumphant when she accuses Shelby of being bugged by her, and they talk about the first day, the bush thrown in Shelby’s face and suddenly they’re standing close.

 _So_ close.

Close enough that she notices how dark Toni’s eyes are.

She hadn’t allowed herself to look properly, for too long, in case what she feared was happening was came true.

“You’re not worth it.” She says, tone flat and deadly.

She means it.

In God’s name does she mean it.

And then she mentions her religion again.

She attacks her for falling back on it, for it being the thing that holds her up.

And she walks away.

Toni lets herself be free. True, it makes turns her inside out in the process, but she’s free.

Shelby wishes she could. What she wishes and wants runs against everything she’s been taught, everything she trusts and knows and she cannot think like _that_ right now.

Not when she has to help. Not when she has to stop everyone from _dying._

When she watches Toni with the mussels she twitches.

She watches as Toni’s tongue pulls the meat away from the shell, watches as her neck moves as she gulps it down. She barely hears the others cheering her on, instead staring at Toni and her tongue and her mouth and she twitches.

Her arrogance in the act shouldn’t make her blush.

Her smile against the shell shouldn’t set her on fire.

Shelby is _so_ close to letting herself indulge.

She clamps it down, quickly. She doesn’t let any of the feelings spill out, she soaks them up and tosses them out the window, anything to stop this feeling. This wrong, sinful feeling that feels so right but also makes her sick to her stomach.

They’re gone, dried up.

And all that’s left is disgust.

Disgust at what it made her feel, disgust in the way that she was taught.

And she speaks.

And it all goes to shit.

Everyone gets sick.

The stench of it fills their tiny home of the beach. The salt from the sea and them circle the air in such a way that Shelby is almost sick herself, but she hardens her resolve.

She clamps down on it.

Everyone forgets what happened, or rather, they let themselves forget for a second to take advantage of her allergies and she gets to work. Almost force feeding them liquids and patting their backs as whatever is left in their stomach comes back up.

No one lets her help Toni.

Fatin brings in up first, Toni doesn’t let her anywhere near her.

But she _has_ to.

She has to save her.

She pushes her back, everyone falling away from them.

Even though everyone’s eyes are on her for the second time today she doesn’t feel it. She only feels Toni’s warmth through her thighs, she feels her struggling against her hands.

Toni smells like absolute shit, Shelby has treated her like shit.

But she has to stop her from killing herself out of pride and her fucked up self-destruction tail spin to prove to Martha that she isn’t a half lit fuse, on the way to explosion the entire time.

“Swallow the fucking pill.” She says, each word short and heated.

Don’t you fucking die Toni, don’t you fucking dare.

She gulps and swallows the pill.

And Shelby runs, finally feeling their eyes on her.

So she goes.

She works twice, no, three times as hard after that.

Half of it is to prove that she’s still the same as before, she just doesn’t have the same _opinions_ as the others. The rest is split between punishing herself and to stop herself from thinking.

Punishing herself from that small flame of desire that she thought she had handled but weathers the storm and burns brighter every day.

Stopping herself from thinking about Toni.

Toni’s eyes.

Toni’s jaw when is clenches in anger, when is falls open at one of Nora's dirty jokes.

Toni and those damn mussels.

She finds two bags in a rockpool.

Her heart lurches.

Maybe, _finally,_ she can sleep closer to camp, she can stop everyone’s eyes being on her. Waiting for her to start lecturing them on what she’s been told.

What she’s been taught.

What she’s been taught can’t be wrong, right? It can't be, not after everything.

Martha thanks her and her mind empties slightly, maybe it’ll be fine and it is, it’s okay for all of two seconds before Leah starts going apeshit on her.

She bares her empty teeth and she runs.

Her mind should be full, should be racing.

But it’s empty.

And it drives her insane.

She sits and replays the last few days in her mind.

And it all keeps coming back to Toni.

_ToniToniToni._

Who is right there, collecting wood.

Toni who _jokes_ with her about the stupid, plastic dentures like she didn’t call her a sinner yesterday.

Until she brings it up.

And her jaw clenches again.

And her tone hardens.

And fuck.

She’s lost a lot.

Her family, her boyfriend, her friends back home, her friends _here,_ everyone knows about her freak teeth.

So what else is there to lose?

She talks. She lets her mouth run and she argues with Toni again. She doesn’t quite understand what she’s saying, about expectations and always wanting to reach that unattainable goal that you just don’t _get,_ but seems to easy for everyone else. So they argue.

But something is different.

Toni isn’t throwing words at her, hoping she’ll fall.

Instead she’s trying to convince her of freedom.

To take a leap into the way she lives.

And so she does.

She indulges.

She grabs Toni by the back of her neck and pulls her in and kisses her before she can stop herself.

Toni freezes for a moment then kisses her back.

Her hands skim Shelby’s skin as one of them rests against her hip, the other one lightly grips her neck.

She touch sends shockwaves throughout her body. Fire spreading across her shoulders, her lips, her hips. Everywhere.

And it makes sense.

Those expectations, all those ideas that felt right but she was told where wrong.

Everything she felt with Becca comes flooding back before she can stop it and she’s not sure she can construct a dam quick enough for the onslaught of everything she’s feeling.

It’s too much.

It’s all too much for her.

She jerks back.

Toni’s eyes lay shut for a moment before snapping open.

She looks at Shelby as if everything makes sense, as if Shelby is some book she can finally read.

It’s too much.

It’s too much.

She turns and runs.

Again.

She hears a broken version of her name behind her but she continues.

And she goes.


	2. Chapter 2

_“If it can be fixed, the pain’s worth it.” He says, smiling, eyes boring into hers._

_They both know he’s not talking about her teeth._

_She drowns everything to do with Becca, holding it down underwater until everything stops struggling._

_\--_

She spirals.

She indulged.

It was good, it felt so fucking good but she indulged too much and now she feels sick.

Has Toni told anyone? Has she told them about her?

No, no, no, no, no. She can’t tell anyone, no one can know, _she_ barely knows.

They saw the plane and everyone becomes her, takes her optimism and hope, leaving her empty.

She’s just figuring it out, free form Andrew, her parents, her church and now she could be going back.

She leaves the others, it’s not like they’re going to miss her anyway, still hung up on the mussel incident.

There’s a hole in her stomach, it feels like all of her organs will fall into the sand, it feels like it’ll engulf her whole.

No one notices, but she feels one pair of eyes on her back, hot as she goes.

She wishes her head was blissfully empty like before, but instead it’s whirlpooling.

Becca comes to her mind. For the first time in months.

_“I see you.”_

She saw Shelby, she saw everything about her and guilt piles up inside her, threatening to choke her, stop her breathing.

God, why now? Why this?

Why challenge her like this? Now?

She thinks about her smile, her laugh, the way that she was still kind, even when Shelby hurtled words of hate toward her.

She can breathe normally again.

But Becca’s memory still aches, like salt in a wound, like alcohol on a cut, like pressing on a bruise or picking at a scab.

Dot comes by, stumbling slightly and gives her some own brand vodka.

She likes Dot. She didn’t say anything about her teeth, she told her the truth about Andrew.

Then she goes.

She hasn’t been drunk much, but she remembers the numbing feeling it gave her.

She opens the bottle and drinks, lungs breathing for air, throat burning, stomach warming, inhibitions loosening.

It’s what she needs.

Numbing.

Away from Becca, away from Toni, away from the others.

She almost smashes her teeth.

It represents something she doesn’t quite know yet.

But she doesn’t, she uses the vodka to clear the sand off it and winces at the burn on the top of her mouth.

She follows the laughter and talks about orgasms with them. Toni’s eyes drifting to her when she talks about homosexuals ‘uniform’ and she stays steadfast in ignoring her.

She does what she does best and suggests a game.

Martha woops and they all run to the sea.

Shelby watches them.

They’re all so happy.

Why can’t she be happy?

Why can’t she want to see her Daddy again?

(Because he’ll ask, he’ll know, he always knows.)

Toni and Martha are laughing at something.

It’s her isn’t it? They know. And they’re laughing at her because she’s a freak with no teeth and no values.

She corners Toni when Martha leaves.

She’s been calmer since the _incident._ She offered her water with a calm expression on her face yesterday, she looks at her with worry instead of animosity.

She hates it.

If she acted like she always did maybe she could work this out, figure this out, this _feeling_ that feels so right but goes against everything she’s ever known.

She assures her that she didn’t tell Martha and Shelby believes her.

“All that hateful church shit is not going to help you figure out who you are-“

She cuts her off, hands grabbing hers.

“I know _exactly_ who I am.”

Her church isn’t hateful, it’s kind, it’s helped her, out, helped her family, got her through some of her toughest times.

(But look what it did to Becca, look what it _made_ you do.)

“And I cannot wait to get home and get back to her.”

Toni looks scared for a second.

Then disappointed.

She can’t handle that.

So she leaves.

She remembers kissing Becca, it was natural, it was right.

It was wrong.

She remembers talking to her Daddy, he was dripping with sweat, telling her about Kyle.

A boy in her Math class, struggling the same way as her.

She’ll do better than him, she’ll get past this, she’ll be the way she’s _meant_ to be, she remembers thinking, she made a dam and held her feelings in.

But a dam can only work for so long.

It leaked when she saw Toni on the plane.

It cracked when she saw her smile.

It came apart with the mussels.

And exploded with a kiss.

_“I see you.”_

Night falls and hope is still strong between the girls.

Martha gives a blanket to Marcus and Fatin gives her a hairbrush.

It gets stuck.

_“I see you.”_

_“If it can be fixed, the pain’s worth it.”_

_“Indulgence has caused all this darlin’.”_

“I don’t fucking want it, I don’t fucking want it.”

She repeats like a mantra.

She doesn’t want to feel for Toni, she doesn’t want to want her.

She doesn’t want to go back and leave this perfect wonderful slice of freedom she’s been given.

She doesn’t want to leave the feeling.

Everyone stares at her.

For the first time in days it’s not with thinly veiled disgust, it’s with fear, worry.

Her hair falls to the ground.

Leah talks to her.

It helps on some level.

But it doesn’t help the two parts of her fighting and arguing and tearing her apart from the inside out.

When Leah leaves and she heads back to camp, everyone is asleep.

She stares at the stars.

Her mind finally clearing from the alcohol.

It’s what she needed, to lose complete control, let her mind run free for just one day. It hurt, it stung, it confused her more than anything but it cleared her.

She might be okay.

The plane meant nothing.

The others lose their joy and she gains hers back, cheering everyone up.

Joking about her teeth.

Dot turns herself into knots blaming herself, but she can’t, not when they all agreed.

Even though it was hell on Earth for her, the others laughed like no tomorrow.

It’s what they deserve.

Her mind has stopped turning and folding in on itself, like a maze that’s falling apart while she’s in it.

And that maybe she’s okay.

She still aches, she still hurts, she’s still confused.

But maybe, just maybe.

She’s okay.

What she’s feeling is, okay.

Toni and Martha invite her on a foraging trip.

Toni takes her side while Martha walks away.

They try to follow it.

Toni is tentative, Shelby hasn’t seen that jaw clench in anger in days. She sings Macklemore and Toni holds a bush back for her. She remembers a similar one being thrust in her face not two weeks ago and something feels just right.

They find the goat.

Martha dismisses the goat.

More arguing takes place.

They walk and walk and walk, mostly in silence. A good kind of silence, Toni being serene is new to her, and it’s slightly terrifying but it helps her think.

God loves all his creations.

Why would he hate her when he created what she is?

They find a lychee tree.

Toni pushes some juice away from her chin.

It send shockwaves through her.

She stiffens for a second.

It’s wrong, you’ll be alone, it’s a sin.

God only makes perfection.

It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay; she tells herself.

This is _okay,_ you can feel like this.

God only makes perfection, this feeling, the one that stirs in her stomach and fogs her head from Toni staring at her like that, feels perfect too her.

It’s okay.

Her hands rest on Toni’s neck.

She’s soft.

It’s all soft.

She didn’t notice that before, too caught up in indulgence to notice anything.

Toni steps back

“Are you sure?”

She sees some of the worry in Toni’s eyes, some fear in there too.

Is she?

She answers with a kiss.

Toni’s skin is warm and soft under her hands, she tastes like lychee, she smells like dirt and Fatin’s body wash.

Toni whispers words into her bare skin, and gasps at her wetness. Shelby has never felt so perfect in her life, Toni reveres her, goes as slow as she wants.

Shelby _feels._ The indulgence doesn’t make her sick this time, it doesn’t set her mind on fire. It sets her body alight, it leaves her mind empty in the _right_ way. It feels like she’s unlocked a part of herself that she kept hidden.

Toni is adorable when she wakes up.

She stumbles over words the next day, while Toni waits for her to finish her sentence, and is calm.

There’s still doubt and confusion twisting in her mind.

She can’t quite verbalize everything.

She wants Toni, she _feels_ for her, but it’s still going against the grain somehow. There are still a few kinks in her that she needs to smoothen out, to understand fully before they talk about it again. The last time she opened herself up for this it ended in the worst way that it could have, she can’t go through that again, can’t relive it.

Toni looks at her as she struggles like she knows exactly what’s happening.

Her faith is strong and true, it calms her. But it’s also told her that she’s wrong, that everything she desires goes against what the Lord wants.

God only makes perfection.

She’s surprised when Toni doesn’t push or shout or plead for her to get her shit together, she just collects lychees while Shelby sits there.

What does it mean? Did it mean anything?

The goat is dead at camp when they get back.

She creates a shitty story to explain while they’re gone.

She’s not sure anyone believes it but she busies herself with helping Dot with the goat instead.

She watches Toni on the bluff, still and silent, watching the sea.

Did it mean nothing to her? Is she calm because she’s just another notch in a bedpost?

Fatin gives her a chatterbox. And tells her she knows.

Fear fills her up, Fatin calms her down.

Fatin didn’t help with the shelter, or with the other things that her and Dot are good at, but she sees right through everyone, understanding all of their books in unknown languages like she’s always knows them.

Each step echoes loud in her head until she reaches her, sitting next to her slightly hesitantly.

She asks if it mattered at all to her.

“Nah Shelby, it’s because I trust you.”

“What the hell did I do to earn that?”

The hole is opening again, her organs ready to climb back out and let her collapse in on herself again.

“You saved my life.”

She sounds so certain, so sure.

How is she so sure?

Shelby’s only ever been sure in her faith, in what she knows. This a great big unknown that she hasn’t even allowed herself to think about, let alone be sure about.

“But, what if it all blows up? What i- what if we end up making each other frickin’ miserable you know? What if I hurt you? I’ve hurt people before.”

She stares at the bluff.

_Becca._

_“I see you.”_

“Very badly.” she finishes, guilt lightly pulsing in the back of her head.

“What if our plane crashes? And what if we nosedive into the ocean? And, you know, end up stranded and what if we wind up lost and starving?”

She looks at Toni.

Calm Toni is a sight to behold.

Again, when her optimism falls short, someone else picks up the mantle, but it doesn’t feel like before, it doesn’t feel like all hope is gone and nothing feels right. It feels like everything is okay, like everything could actually _be_ okay.

“All of that already happened. The worst has already fucking happened. I don’t think I’ve got it in me to get that scared about something that could be good”

This is something good.

This is something good.

She holds her palm up against Toni’s face and she leans into it.

It makes her heart skip a beat.

And they kiss.

And it’s okay.

Until Rachel gets attacked by a shark.

Then it all goes up into flames.

Again.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed xx
> 
> Comments are the bees knees, but please do not feel obliged to leave one if you don't want to :)
> 
> My tumblr is 'its3amandiamverytired' if anyone wants to come and vibe.


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